The civil logic is actually quite reasonable - one could argue that the time to react should be longer, but if you're properly trained, and in the right frame of mind, one second is almost long enough. (The reason for saying it's almost long enough is that everyone I know, and me as well, who's had an engine failure has been surprised, and would have like more time to react).
But the main point about the civil logic is that you have to have your right hand on the cyclic pretty much all the time, and feet on the pedals pretty much all the time, and that you'd probably react to uncommanded changes in those axis within one second. Collective? Not so much - you might have your hand off the collective when the engine failure happens, so you have 1 second to react to get it down.
Hope that helps...